


The Choices We Make

by thoughtsappear



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 18:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5637514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsappear/pseuds/thoughtsappear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He makes one choice  and his whole world shifts. For the first time in his life, Finn makes decisions, Finn feels doubt and worry and he <i>feels</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Choices We Make

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lola99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lola99/gifts).



> we change by the speed of the choices we make ~ Bush

Finn never dreams. But when he wakes this time, he’s sure it was all a dream.

He wakes up in a med bay full of medical droids and he thinks for a minute that none of it happened. He worries that tomorrow he’ll be in for reconditioning and he tenses. He resigns himself to this fate almost as quickly as he originally denied it. But then he sees a smiling human face and he regains hope. 

Finn is overwhelmed when they let in visitors and there’s the General, and there’s Rey, and there’s Poe. They come to visit in little groups. Rey talks his ear off about Master Luke and her training and Poe talks about the Resistance and the General talks about how fast his recovery has been. Within a few weeks he’s out of the medbay and living like a soldier again, and it’s familiar and yet somehow it’s completely foreign.

He thinks about how just a few weeks ago, he was just FN-2187 and he always knew what he was supposed to do. There were always people telling him when to fight, when to sleep, when to eat and he never, never doubted that what he was doing was the right thing. 

He makes one choice and his whole world shifts. For the first time in his life, Finn makes decisions, Finn feels doubt and worry and he _feels._

He feels enough that one night he can’t sleep and so he crawls out of his bunk and goes up the ladder to Rey’s. Ever since he got out of the medbay, he’s been sleeping with the rest of the Resistance soldiers in the makeshift barracks. He’s been given a bunkbed to share with Rey, who naturally takes the top. He finds all her hiding spaces, where she stashes food, or tools or strange trinkets. Rey sneaks out of her bunk most nights, she doesn’t like the crowded barracks of the Resistance and prefers to be alone. Finn doesn’t mind the barracks, the bunks are like the trooper barracks but yet somehow not so cold and sterile. 

For whatever reason, that night Rey didn’t sneak out. Even on the nights she stays, she rarely sleeps. He gives her a little nudge and she sits up immediately. He sits cross legged on her bed and he talks. Rey listens. 

“I don’t know, Finn,” Rey says. She hangs upside down over the edge of the bunk bed. She never sits still.

“What do you _want_ to do?”

There’s a question he’s never been asked. He lays flat on his back and contemplates. 

He contemplates so long that he falls asleep on Rey’s bunk. He wakes up the next day and still has no answers.

==

It hurts sometimes, but he’s still in therapy and they won’t let him fly or fight right now, but they all keep telling him to wait. He stumbles sometimes, and he’ll grab Rey’s arm to steady himself, or Poe will reach out to help him before he loses his feet. His reflexes are always faster than Finn’s.

He comes across Poe and Rey talking and it makes him feel strange. Not entirely unwelcome, but like he doesn’t belong. Rey and Poe talk about ships for hours and their conversations are in a language he doesn’t understand. Rey talks his ear off about it later at dinner, about how he’s gonna let her fly his x-wing and about how he knows all about the Millennium Falcon and about what a big deal it is that Han trusted her with it and Finn nods and quietly steals Rey’s rations off her plate which earns him a slap on the wrist.

“I’m glad you two were able to meet,” he finally says. 

Rey rolls her eyes and tugs on his arm. “When he stopped talking about the Falcon, all he could talk about was you.”

Finn can’t hold back his smile, and he stares off into the distance. Rey takes the opportunity to take his bread ration, which he allows, and even pushes the rest of his food onto her plate. When he thinks about Poe his throat kind of gets dry and he feels a kind of nervous energy in his stomach. It’s the same feeling he got when they were sneaking away in the TIE fighter, except this feeling is less about the fear of being shot to death, and more like the way it felt when the Falcon did a hairpin turn. Like his stomach was briefly in his throat. 

“Go talk to him,” Rey says, motioning to a table near the back, where Poe is sitting with a couple other pilots.

“Don’t try to use your jedi tricks on me,” Finn says. Rey laughs and gives him back his bread. He eats it, trying to get the strange taste out of his mouth. He doesn’t talk to Poe, but he sneaks looks at him for the entire rest of the meal. 

==

He doesn’t talk to Poe again until they both are standing side by side in the hangar watching General Organa as she welcomes back pilots from a mission. He likes watching the ships come in and go out. 

“You like her?” Poe asks. The question was unexpected. He’s not sure how to answer. He likes the General, sure. She’s like Rey in some ways, guarded but not cold. Serious but not stoic. 

Finn doesn’t say anything. Instead he just nods and they watch together as the pilots walk by. The General takes up the rear and nods at each of them as she passes. Poe stands straighter, and Finn takes up the pilot’s body language as his own.

“She seems sad,” Finn remarks to Poe about the General.

“She’s always been sad,” Poe responds. “More so, lately. She’s suffered some losses lately.” 

Finn nods again. Loss is only something he has begun to understand. It is not something he has ever felt before, but he can only imagine how much it must hurt. Probably the way he felt when he thought he’d lost Rey, but magnified a thousand times.

Poe shifts, and Finn turns to see him better. “So...you and Rey…”

“Yeah?”

“Is she your...?” Poe asks. He makes a hand gesture Finn has never seen before. His body language relaxes again now that they are alone. He waits for Finn to respond, and crosses his arms in front of his chest. 

Finn isn’t sure what he means. He’s still getting used to the way Poe talks. He’s straightforward most of the time, but when he hesitates, Finn has trouble understanding. But then realization creeps in. Of course.

“We’re friends,” Finn explains. “I mean-” 

He swallows. “She doesn't have a boyfriend.”

“Oh, I just thought,” Poe laughs and uncrosses his arms. “I mean you sleep in the same bunk.”

Finn stops and looks at him. He doesn’t get the joke. “It’s just that...we went through this thing together and…”

“I get it,” Poe says. “It makes sense that you would... _cling_ to each other.”

“Yeah,” Finn says. He’s not sure what the expression on Poe’s face is. He’s not always good at reading faces. Sometimes the more subtle expressions don’t register with him. Sometimes Rey forgets too. 

“She’ll be okay,” Poe says after they stand there for a stretched out moment. 

“It’s not her I’m worried about,” Finn replies softly.

“You’ll be okay,” Poe says without hesitation, and he squeezes Finn’s shoulder just once. Finn gets the tight feeling in his throat. Poe excuses himself and Finn stands there for another few moments until the feeling subsides.

==

Rey misses more meals more often. She’s training, or working on the Falcon with Chewbacca, always has an excuse. Finn eats alone on those days, or quietly at a table with a few other Resistance soldiers. One day he is late for the noon meal, and he looks across the Mess hall to see Poe waving him over to a table.

He sits across from Poe and they talk. About missions, about flying, about fighting. Poe is easy to talk to, and he loves to hear Finn’s stories. He asks about life as a trooper. Finn tells him. He’s honest, he figures Poe can handle it. 

“It sounds like being a soldier is the same no matter where you go,” Poe remarks.

“Oh no,” Finn shakes his head twice. “Being here is nothing like being with the Order. Here they let you make your own decisions, they ask for your opinion, and the people...they care about each other.”

Poe smiles, an easy, unguarded smile that makes his face even more handsome if that was possible. 

“I guess it’s a good thing I got my ass captured wasn’t it?” he says. Poe has a way of making a joke out of everything. “I wouldn't have made it out without you, I’m glad I got to be your pilot.”

Finn can feel his face get hot. He looks down at his empty plate. Poe has a way of making a joke out of everything. 

“You’re cute when you blush,” Poe says. He takes a drink of his water. “Did I ever tell you about the time BB-8 and I…”

==

When Finn comes back from evening meal, Rey is asleep in his bunk. He shrugs off ~~Poe’s~~ his jacket and hangs it up. He can see the ugly tear through the back and the scorch marks from the saber and he frowns. 

“One of the laundry crew should be able to patch that right up,” a voice comes from behind him. It’s General Organa. She is looking from him to Rey and he thinks he sees a bit of a smile forming on her face. 

“Can’t have you wearing it like that, can we?” she continues. “My soldiers need to look the part.”

“Yes, General,” he says, standing at attention. She looks a bit surprised but pleased. 

“It wasn’t an order,” she says, this time smiling for real. “Just a suggestion.”

When Rey wakes up, he asks her what she thinks. She looks at the tear the same way he does, and he can see her remembering. It’s the jacket that protected him from sand and snow and Ren’s lightsaber. She looks sad for a moment, but then she lets the corners of her mouth relax and almost smiles. 

“I kind of like it,” she finally says. “Yeah it’s not so perfect anymore, but it shows what you’ve been through.”

Once again Finn is to decide for himself. A few days later Finn takes the jacket to the laundry, not because the General told him to, but because he really does want it to look better. Not like it never happened, but in one piece. He tells them to fix it, but not patch it. The droid seems to understand. 

He goes to the noon meal and eats with Rey. He watches her slip a piece of vegetable ration into her pack and he ends up giving her all his bread. She gives him a kiss on the cheek when she leaves. Everything is so easy with Rey, he thinks. 

==

Finn sits on his bunk before bed, holding the jacket over his lap. One of the laundry workers brought it back to him only a few minutes ago, cleaned and repaired. The scorch marks remain and the seam down the back is still visible. 

Poe walks up to the bunk and acts surprised to see him. He looks down at the jacket in Finn’s hand. 

“You fixed it,” he says reaching out to trace the line. The stitches are neat and uniform, in a perfect matching color of thread. “I’m glad you left it a little rough. It looks more badass like that.”

Finn smiles and looks at Poe, who leans against the ladder and suddenly seems nervous. He clears his throat. 

“I was looking for Rey…” Poe stares into the top bunk. 

“I don’t know where she is,” Finn says. “She went off with Master Luke about twenty minutes ago. I’m sure she’ll be easy to find.”

“Okay.” Poe makes no move to leave. Instead he sits down next to Finn. “Okay, so I wasn’t looking for her as much as I was wondering if we could talk.”

Finn sighs. He knew this was coming. Poe’s been gone for a few days on a supply run. They haven’t talked since he got back. 

“Is it about Rey?” Finn says. He looks at Poe, meeting the man’s eye. “She is very beautiful. She is my best friend. I’ve never had a friend before.” He holds out the jacket. “I know you like her.”

“Rey _is_ beautiful.” Poe doesn’t break eye contact with Finn for a second. “But you look better in my jacket.”

Poe takes his empty hand and squeezes it but doesn’t let go. Finn looks down at their fingers and he can’t help but smile.

“I came here to tell you something,” Poe clears his throat. “Rey told me you’ve been having a little trouble making a decision. And I’m having a little trouble too, Finn.” 

Poe is uncharacteristically serious for a moment. “This is new to me.”

“Everything is new to me,” Finn says and the mood breaks. Poe laughs so loud and so long Finn has to laugh with him. 

“But I don’t-” 

“I didn’t realize-”

They both talk at the same time. Poe laughs again. Finn nods and he holds tight to Poe’s hand.

“You,” he says, motioning to Finn. “What do you want?”

“I want you,” Finn says. Blunt and honest and it makes his throat tighten up with nerves but it’s the truth and he hasn’t always told the truth but he needs to today. He doesn’t understand these feelings. But he’s learned in the past few months that _nobody_ understands these feelings. Now that he has the choice to make, he wants to make it for himself. 

“It’s always been you.” Poe looks at him and Finn recognizes a new look on his face. It’s relief. It’s happiness. It’s the look of a man who can fly anything and make it soar, the face of a man that has exactly what he needs at that moment. 

When Poe kisses him, his lips are warm and it makes Finn’s whole body warm too. And it feels as good as when Poe gave him a name and made him no longer a number. Finn doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, he doesn’t know what choices he’ll have to make in the future, but he knows this is what he wants.


End file.
